Research article - Peer-reviewed, 2021
How useful are perception- and experienced-based measures in predicting actual food choice? Evidence from an in-store field experiment using a multi-response approach
Lagerkvist, C. J.; Mwende, Janet; Muoki, Penina; Okello, Julius J.Abstract
Multi-response approaches have gained popularity in product-based research for obtaining deeper and more generalizable product insights related to product performance. Through a natural in-store field experiment, this study examined how perception-based and experience-based measures, within a multi-response approach, serve to predict actual product choice. We investigated consumers' evaluation and acceptance of a novel biofortified orange-fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP) puree bread with a set of 141 (Treatment A: OFSP bread) and 204 (Treatment B: other bread) randomly selected bread buyers in Nairobi, Kenya. Non-parametric machine learning methods were used for partitioning and predictive purposes. They included unbiased conditional inference trees and theory-based model-based recursive partitioning. After identifying an individual specific reference product, we first examined how Just-About-Right scaling for sensory evaluation related to nutritional beliefs, liking, and economic valuation. The latter measure was based on an incentive-compatible and consequential Becker-DeGroot-Marshak approach. The results revealed structural differences in the way that the evaluation of sensory attributes are predictive of the perception- based measures. Liking evaluation was strongly predictive of actual choice, while the economic valuation was only weakly so. Notably, neither nutritional beliefs as a food quality characteristics nor any of the dimensions related to product conceptualizations by CATA counts, including that of emotions, were predicative of the actual choice. These results suggest a further need to develop and integrate measures related to circumstantially derived state of wanting to better predict actual product choice in a natural environment.Keywords
Kenya; Consumer; Product conceptualization; Sensory evaluation; JAR scale; Reference-dependent preferencesPublished in
Food Quality and Preference2021, volume: 94, article number: 104320
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCI LTD
Authors' information
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Economics
Mwende, Janet
International Potato Center (CIP)
Muoki, Penina
International Potato Center (CIP)
Okello, Julius J.
International Potato Center (CIP)
UKÄ Subject classification
Food Science
Publication Identifiers
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2021.104320
URI (permanent link to this page)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/113322